Synergising Digitaltech and Climatetech to Enhance ASEAN Climate Action

In Southeast Asia, ‘climatetech’ and ‘digitaltech’ have been advocated but practised for too long in isolation. Climate technology (climatetech) comprises technologies developed to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, while digital technology (digitaltech) refers to tools, devices, and systems utilising digital information and processes to improve agricultural operations. As the agricultural sector is the largest GHG emissions contributor in six out of the ten ASEAN Member States (AMS), converging both technologies is a low-hanging fruit that would help ASEAN reduce the region’s impact on global warming.

Climatetech can be used for mitigation and adaptation purposes, as shown in this article’s example of rice cultivation. Mitigation can reduce GHG emissions directly or increase the capacity of soil-based carbon sinks to absorb GHG emissions, while for adaptation, climatetech includes technologies that can help agrifood systems adapt to climatic variability and climate change.

According to the World Bank, on average, rice cultivation contributes 43 per cent of total national agricultural GHG emissions in Southeast Asia, with the highest shares in rice exporting nations like Vietnam (50 per cent) and Thailand (65 per cent). A climatetech called “Alternate-Wetting-Drying” (AWD), where paddy fields are periodically drained to a certain threshold and then re-flooded, can reduce methane emissions by up to 50 per cent. AWD uses hollow pipes embedded in paddy fields (Picture 1) to monitor water levels when they are drained to a depth which avoids damaging the rice plants. Currently, farmers make manual observations of the water depth; research in Vietnam and Japan has shown the practicality of digitalised low-cost sensors to monitor water levels at scale. 

Picture 1. Rice fields with hollow pipes monitoring water levels for Alternate-Wetting-Drying technology

Improving the ease of monitoring would incentivise farming communities to scale up the use of AWD. Using digital sensors instead of manual methods would also enable governments and the private sector to estimate the total methane reduction from a locality. This can then contribute to a Measurement, Reporting, Verification (MRV) system for carbon credits. Governments, including Vietnam’s, are piloting this approach, and companies are estimating carbon credits for their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Notably, Vietnam is the first AMS to use AWD to help meet its NDC target.

Climatetech for mitigation can potentially be enhanced with digitaltech to improve the efficiency of fertiliser application and provide alternatives to burning, for instance, in reducing nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions from pastureland and reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂₎ from the burning of crop waste.

The use of digitaltech in agrifood systems has grown rapidly in Southeast Asia in the past decade. Presentations at a recent ASEAN-Japan symposium held in Vietnam showed how digital agritech can help farmers increase crop yields, reduce costs, and anticipate severe weather events. Japan is sharing its expertise with AMS and Timor-Leste: Japanese farmers have long converged digitaltech with climatetech to adapt farming practices to preserve crop yields. The farmers anticipate water supply and demand to judiciously apply fertilisers, among other methods.

Agrifood systems contribute to and suffer from global warming, which mitigation and adaptation climatetech, respectively, can ameliorate. However, applying digitaltech to improve or increase climatetech’s impact requires financing. At the policy level, governments have to consider this aspect when countries source for more investments for climate action, as was called for during COP29.

Furthermore, while individual farmers have successfully implemented climatetech for mitigation, scaling up across the AMS would require collective action under public-private partnerships. This would include working with ASEAN dialogue partners and the private sector. AMS can use existing ASEAN mechanisms to identify priorities for high-impact climatetech collective action, such as the ASEAN Climate Change Initiative (ACCI), the ASEAN Working Group on Climate Change (AWGCC) and the ASEAN Climate Resilience Network (CRN). All these mechanisms can provide collaborative platforms for knowledge-sharing and informing policymakers and practitioners about best practices and innovations in climate-resilient agriculture.

It is imperative that climatetech and digitaltech mechanisms and groups be united under the ASEAN umbrella to determine priority action on reducing GHG emissions in agriculture.

Separately, including digital agriculture in groups such as the ASEAN Sectoral Working Group on Crops (ASWGC) and the ASEAN Technical Working Group on Agricultural Research and Development (ATWGARD), and using ASEAN Guidelines on Promoting the Utilization of Digital Technologies for ASEAN Food and Agricultural Sector have helped ASEAN’s push for digitaltech.

The future will bring serious challenges to the region’s food security. For ASEAN, building up climate resilience in agriculture will be a priority. To this end, it is developing a successor to its Vision and Strategic Plan for ASEAN Cooperation in Food, Agriculture and Forestry (FAF) 2016-2025. The 2016-2025 plan has guided AMS collaboration for the past decade but the next plan will need to leverage the combined use of climatetech at community and regional levels with digitaltech, to create an additive impact on food systems.

It is imperative that climatetech and digitaltech mechanisms and groups be united under the ASEAN umbrella to determine priority action on reducing GHG emissions in agriculture. Multi-stakeholder collaboration requires digitaltech: in 2025, the time is now to converge the two for accelerated climate action.

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